


A Northern Reel

by just_a_dram



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Dancing, F/M, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-10 00:07:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_dram/pseuds/just_a_dram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's only a dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Northern Reel

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the gameofshipschallenges Ships of Ice and Fire winter tropes challenge.

Sansa begged him to dance with her—just the once—and though he even refuses such requests from the Mother of Dragons and others at the southron court, the Queen of the North, he finds, he cannot so easily refuse. Every day he is back here in the North, back at Winterfell, and by Sansa’s side, he finds it harder and harder to refuse her anything, whereas once he never thought to try to please his most remote sibling. His acquiescence is still reluctantly given, however, for his dislike of dancing is real, and so he drags his feet, as she pulls him towards the center of the hall, where the couples form a double line.

“It’s easy, nothing to it, a Northern Reel,” she says, her bright blue eyes shining in the candle light, her hand warm in his.

Her assurance helps, for if it is Northern, surely it will fit him better than the traditions of the South, which he can hardly manage to ape without feeling false and foolish. But then she adds, “In 4/4 time,” and he’s reminded that it was Northern dancing he was taught with Sansa as a partner and he’s not more likely to understand its intricacies now with ten namedays passed since his last lesson than he was before, when the steps were more regularly drilled into his too thick head.

“Sansa,” he pleads, ready to ask her whether they could not find some other way to celebrate his visit, something quieter and less likely to end with him stepping on the hem of her dove grey skirts, but the brassy sounding horns have already begun and the line of dancers that they slip amongst begin to clap their hands in time to the quick rhythm of the music and whatever he could have said to draw her away is drowned out in the thunderous enthusiasm of the room.

He’s not usually so clumsy. He is quick on his feet and good at other things that require coordination, which is why his inability to make his feet be anything but half a beat behind hers is so mortifying. Although, he’s not sure why it should bother him. He never wanted to be any good at dancing or he would have paid the dancing master more heed, and Sansa certainly is aware of his failings. Even if they were never close, they know each other best in this world, where the rest of their family is lost to them, a realization that has drawn them closer than he would have imagined possible.

Too close, perhaps, for Jon has over the past few days had to work rather harder than he’d like to remind himself that though he is her cousin by blood, they were brother and sister once and that they shared a father. The thoughts he entertains about her would shame her, her lady mother, and their lord father. It is musing on his own gut wrenching guilt that causes him to miss the progress of the two couples that make their way down the line first, passing before them and under the arch of arms that reach over them, but as the third couple reaches the end of the line, he sees what is in store for he and Sansa and he finally remembers this jaunty tune and the bawdy lyrics that go along with it.

At the end of the line, the couple kiss, hands matching up palm to palm at shoulder height as their lips come together with raucous hoots of approval. It was a dance they never practiced, but he saw it danced in this very hall on more than one occasion with Sansa looking on, keeping time with her tapping feet, no doubt wishing she was old enough to join. She is old enough now and she has dragged him out here as her partner.

If he doesn’t somehow extricate them both from this, they will face the same fate as the couple that has just rushed by them—her lips, bowed and pink, tasting of Arbor gold, pressed against his—and the thought is enough to make Jon stumble over his own feet. Sansa tips her head back and laughs, and his chest feels tight, his face hot. She doesn’t know the danger. If they kiss, he’s not sure he’ll be able to go back to not kissing her, he’s not sure he won’t be able to stop himself from telling her all the terrible things he’s thought alone in his chambers, while he paced the floors unsleeping, and what Daenerys would say to a request to unite their house with the Stark house once more, deepening the flow of traitor’s blood in another generation, he can’t begin to imagine.

His timing is not good. When he reaches across the space to grab Sansa’s arm, he causes a couple to stutter to a halt, until he’s pulled Sansa free of the melee and back out of the way of the dancers, off to the side. Despite her enthusiasm for the dance, she comes along silently, and he’s not sure why he keeps leading her further and further down the length of the hall until they are through its arching doorway and in a dark alcove alone, but she follows and doesn’t mock, when he turns a quarter turn away from her to scrub his face in evident agitation.

“Is everything all right?” she finally asks, her fingers a light, questing pressure against his shoulder. “Did I upset you?”

“That isn’t the dance for us.”

He won’t face her, but she insinuates herself between him and the wall, slipping in the narrow space until her skirts tangle with his legs and her hand brushes his chest. “Ah. Do you really think not?”

He can’t answer that. He didn’t kiss her so that he would never have to answer that.

Her hand moves upward, tracing the seam of his doublet, rounding over the collar, and threading through his curls. “I thought it might be just the one for us, Jon. Shall we see?”

He was right. When she rises up on her toes so they are face to face and her lips meet his, they are flush and soft, he can taste the evening’s wine upon them, and he takes too much rather than too little in the eager press of first their lips and then their bodies. He’s lost from the moment it’s begun. It is the dance for him. It fits him better than anything ever could in the South.


End file.
